The key to surviving the lockdown is to find a goal to keep you going. For some, it might be mastering the art of sourdough baking, for others, it’s learning a new language. For you, it could be learning to code.
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, CEO of Stemettes and host of the Evening Standard’s Women Tech Charge podcast, says you should learn to code even if you’re not planning to use it as part of your career plans. “We need to learn to code as literacy. The same way you learned English so you could understand the world around you… You’re not doing it to build a million-pound company, you’re doing it to understand 21st-century life,” she says.
Whether it’s through an 80s-style arcade game, or live-streamed classes, the key is finding the right way to learn for you. And then start scribbling down ideas for that million-pound company too.
Anyone’s game
If you want to learn something, the trick is to make it interesting and one way to do that is gamifying the process. That’s what Twilio did with its TwilioQuest platform, which teaches people to code via an Eighties-inspired arcade-type game.
Initially, TwilioQuest was set up to help developers learn how to create apps for the cloud software company, but now anyone can learn to code using the platform. The latest version of the game launched last August and more than 14,000 developers have finished 100,000-plus challenges.
“Coding is a great skill to have in general and it’s nice to have the dedicated time to work on it,” explains Twilio developer evangelist, Layla Porter. “It’s a chance to use this time when we are forced inside, probably in front of one screen or another, and learn a new skill that could change your career.” (free, twilio.com/quest)
Child’s play
Coding is on the UK curriculum now so it’s important to keep it up even though the schools have closed. Scratch was created by MIT for ages eight to 16, and allows you to create your own interactive stories, games and animations that can be shared online (free, scratch.mit.edu).
If your little one is younger than eight, start them on an app. Hopster Coding Safari for Kids is a pre-coding logic game to help kids learn the fundamentals, while codeSpark Academy: Kids Coding doesn’t use words but helps to teach programming basics through activities such as puzzles. (free, hopster.tv; £9.99 a month, codespark.com)
Model steps
The Flatiron School is one of London’s best bootcamps and is well-known for being the US school that taught model Karlie Kloss how to code.
Of the first cohort of 22 students who graduated last year, all received job offers, with the average salary at £35,385. There’s a free coding taster session, which is about 75 hours in total, or a more in-depth 15-week long bootcamp.
“It’s important during this challenging time that we support our students to continue learning,” says Flatiron School London’s GM Selin Ozdiktas. “We are committed to delivering the same high quality curriculum and community learning experience that our students can always expect from Flatiron.” (flatironschool.com)
Switch it up
If you get distracted by the constant barrage of messages on your phone, there are other platforms available to learn to code.
Take the popular Nintendo Switch console. FUZE4 is the first global coding platform that allows users to create their own games and apps on the Switch. It features tutorials to learn to code from scratch and comes pre-loaded with thousands of assets to make a fully-fledged game.
Once it’s ready, you can share it with your other Switch pals to play IRL. The FUZE team recently made the first in its Coding Projects Books available for free online. (£12.99, fuze.co.uk)
“I taught myself to code before launching my own start-up”
Kai Feller, CEO and co-founder of services marketplace Bark (bark.com), decided to learn how to code in 2013 as he was frustrated with working with developers and not fully understanding the work at hand.
“I didn’t like the idea that developers might tell me a job that should only take two days would take two weeks because of my lack of understanding. I also loved the idea of having complete control over the growth of my business and being able to create a functional online site from scratch, with endless creative opportunities to reach any market around the world,” he told the Standard.
Feller started learning using CodeAcademy (codeacademy.com), a free platform which over 45 million people has used to learn the basics of coding languages. He then graduated to attending tech events and hackathons in London, as well as using online webinars to gain a better understanding.
Using his new-found skills, Feller launched the app Socialite and expanded his knowledge on the job, before launching Bark in 2015. “Technology is increasingly making its way into all aspects of our everyday lives and the potential of learning to code will be invaluable.
“I think the idea of learning to code can be overwhelming but once you put your mind to it you can get into the rhythm quite quickly,” he added.
